4i6 FORBIDDEN FISH—NETTING—F/F^i?7^ The Jews acquired no intimate knowledge of the ichthyicbranch of natural history. Although acquainted with aomeof the names given by the Egs^itians and Alexandrians todifferent species (Josephus compares a fish found in the sea ofGennesaret to the Coracitus i) they adopted no similar methodof distinguishing them, or any classffication beyond the broaddivision of clean and unclean. The biological knowledgeconcerning fish showm in the Talmud was of a very primitiveorder, not merely in regard to embryology and propagation, butalso as to hatching. 2 It does, indeed, require the firmly-shut eye of faith toconceive that the fish of Raphael's great Madonna del Pesce,which scarcely weighs two pounds and is carried on a stringby the youth Tobias, can have been to him an object of dangerand tenor, or that it " leaped out of the river and would haveswaUowed him " had it not been for the Angel's command toseize the brute (Tobit vi. 2, 3). Raphael's cartoon is anotherinstance of the untrammeUed Uberty of the Italian artist.Most of the fishes are mere nondescript piscine forms of artisticfancy, but two are certainly of the Skate or Ray family, whichis never found in fresh water I Then, again, how oddly BotticeUi and other paintersmisconceive their man-eating fish, which must have been acrocodUe strayed from the Indus or the Nile to the waters ofthe Tigris. Fortunately Dr. Tristram 3 comes to our aid as regards thefresh-water fish of modem, and probably of ancient Palestine.Of his forty-three species, only eight are common to the morewesterly Meditenanean rivers and lakes. Of thirty-six foundin the Jordan and its affluents, but one occurs in the ordinarythree to accompany him, that these three were aU Fishermen." As a contiastto the excellent character given to the four fisher Apostles by Walton, alearned di-vine of Worms, J. Ruchard, found it incumbent in 1479 to defendPeter from the charge of instituting abstinence from flesh, so that he couldprofitably dispose of his fish ! KeUer, op. cii., p. 335. 1 B. J., III. 10, 18. " It is watered by a most fertUe fountain. Somehave thought it to be a vein of the Nile, as it produces the Coracin fish asweU as that lake does, which is near Alexandria." ' Smith's Hist, of the Bible (1890), and Singer's Jewish Encyclopadia,v., p. 403, however, mention the JTunny, Herring, Eel, etc. ' See, also, E. W. G. Masterman, Studies in Galilee, Chicago, 1909.